House Hunter

House Hunter

"Old houses
like old gardens
can be brought back
to life, and often are
with new occupants"

There are those amongst us who believe
that as we struggle with our first few
gasps of Heaven, wearing our past like
tattered rags, we all desperately conjure
up houses that we once lived in;
extant and vibrant in every detail,
down to the thumb tack holes and crayon
art on the walls, complete with odors
and scars, familiar yet sad and empty,
void of voices, without pets and pests.

I visit the houses of my life in my
mind daily, shuffling them like a pack
of Tarot cards, for I lived in a full
pack, raised as urban nomad, barely
able to unpack my comic books before
it was time again to strike the circus
tents, and get into the caravan on the
move to the next adventure, the next
house.

Their names and faces are all there;
Ballard, Georgetown, Burien, White
Center, West Seattle, Renton, Kent,
Covington, Lynnwood, and Lake City;
all with different houses, different
schools, different challenges--ever
the renters; never claiming ownership
of wood or tile or turf or brick or
garden.

If that were not enough, now I drive
about the Northwest chasing ghosts,
with my arthritic hands gripping firmly
on the steering wheel, searching for
those houses I keep dreaming about,
knowing that somehow I lived in them
once too, in other dimensions, in other
lifetimes--and oddly they are the
abandoned hulks that call to me,
not the myriad brick-a-bract domiciles
of my shimmering youth.

Glenn Buttkus August 2010

Posted as #35 over on Magpie Tales #29